The three men presented a rather weary
appearance as they sat
talking in the late afternoon September sun of 1805. Each was perched on
the stump of a very recently cut tree, eating his meager evening meal.
Two of the men seemed to defer to the third man. His name was
Joseph McClure and he was thirty years of age, having been born May 14,
1775 in Belchertown, Worcester Co., Massachusetts.

Growing up in Massachusetts, he had originally trained for the medical profession.

He had found that profession not to his liking; in fact, he had found he
disliked it in the extreme and had abandoned it. Also well educated in
mathematics and geometry, and a great lover of the outdoors, he had
subsequently discovered himself well suited for surveying.

He brought his young family to Genesee County, New York, and found work with
the Holland Land Company. Compass and chain in hand, and with the two
axemen, Solomon Curtis and Ira Pratt, who accompanied him to do the
clearing, he was now employed in surveying the Purchase.

Gradually the little family had worked its way westward, with Joseph and the men
always going on ahead. This time he had left his wife, Betsy Grice McClure, and
his four small children thirty miles behind him in Angelica.

The three men had come now to this beautiful area which would come
to be known as the Ischua Valley. There was something about the way the
autumnal sun struck the changing colors of the forest trees that caught
his fancy; he could see also the still verdant, lush green herbage in
the clearings.

Suddenly he felt a real urge to settle in this place. An idea began to take root in
his mind, and perhaps in his soul. He thought of his wife and children and
envisioned a log cabin here in which they would be relatively secure. Still
meditating on this thought, he continued eating his evening meal, The next day the
three men began to build a crude cabin to which they could return for shelter at the
end of a working day."